If it were [possible], Ken, if it were and there was just half an inch to trade for my fifty years, would you then?" Kenji thought about that for a long while. "When it comes to the last half an inch and it starts to hurt, I’ll sell the car and spend the rest of my life sitting here with a drink in my hand and feeling good." "That means no, of course." "That means no, yes." "Thanks for being honest." … So they sat silently through the next drink, one already dead but still alive and contemplating the next fifty or sixty years more of dead aliveness, and the other, living and dying slowly. They were two extremes, the Japanese who was more American than most Americans because he had crept to the brink of death for America, and the other who was neither Japanese nor American because he had failed to recognize the gift of his birthright when recognition meant everything.